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Inflate to grasp – Development of a canopy raft for environmental monitoring
Environmental monitoring is becoming one of the fundamental challenges of our time. We are seeking to develop a platform that can be deployed on the top of a tree canopy and remain there for extended periods of time for environmental monitoring.
Forest canopies are hotspots of biological diversity and contribute to the stability of world climate. With increasing human induced change comes a growing demand for large spatial and temporal data acquisition from within forest canopies to better conserve, restore and sustainably exploit these ecosystems.
With this in mind, we would like to develop a canopy raft that exploits inflation to jam objects between adjacent inflatable units and grasp on the diverse tree branches and foliage of our canopies. The raft will furthermore need to be deployed from a drone. It will serve as a sensor hub and station to deploy smaller robots into the canopy.
Within this project, we aim to develop an inflatable grasping mechanism integrated in a raft to enable large scale grasping or distributed grasping of tree branches and foliage.
Forest canopies are hotspots of biological diversity and contribute to the stability of world climate. With increasing human induced change comes a growing demand for large spatial and temporal data acquisition from within forest canopies to better conserve, restore and sustainably exploit these ecosystems.
With this in mind, we would like to develop a canopy raft that exploits inflation to jam objects between adjacent inflatable units and grasp on the diverse tree branches and foliage of our canopies. The raft will furthermore need to be deployed from a drone. It will serve as a sensor hub and station to deploy smaller robots into the canopy.
Within this project, we aim to develop an inflatable grasping mechanism integrated in a raft to enable large scale grasping or distributed grasping of tree branches and foliage.
The goal of the project is to i) develop an inflation-based grasping mechanism and ii) integrate it into a raft structure that can be deployed from a drone onto a tree canopy.
**Work packages**
- Investigate and understand the natural challenges
- Familiarization with grasping methods and specifically inflation-based grasping / gripping
- Develop a grasping mechanism based on inflation and subsequent jamming of objects
- Testing in- and outdoor
**Requirements**
- High motivation and interested in robotics for environmental research
- Background in mechanical engineering, design, materials and/or soft materials and/or manufacturing
- Methodological and goal-oriented working behavior
- Creative and exploratory mindset
- Good communication skills
The goal of the project is to i) develop an inflation-based grasping mechanism and ii) integrate it into a raft structure that can be deployed from a drone onto a tree canopy.
**Work packages**
- Investigate and understand the natural challenges
- Familiarization with grasping methods and specifically inflation-based grasping / gripping
- Develop a grasping mechanism based on inflation and subsequent jamming of objects
- Testing in- and outdoor
**Requirements**
- High motivation and interested in robotics for environmental research